Frog Cycle Sensory Bin

 Frog Cycle Sensory Bin! 

Today, we learned all about frog cycles with a new sensory bin!  

To set it up I used blue and green water beads, the Safari, Ltd. Life Cycle of a Frog set found here, and I cut a few lily pads from green foam.

I also included some laminated life cycle cards that are made by Curriculum Castle that I found here.

This was such a fun sensory bin that was easy to set up and really reinforced the frog life cycle we've been talking about all week!

Zoo Passports

Yesterday was our first zoo day (of many) of the year! 

To kick off the start of zoo season, I really wanted to do something fun. I know most people do scavenger hunts at the zoo and we have in the past but, I wanted to shake it up. That's when I found the zoo passport! After hunting around Pinterest for hours I finally found one where the link actually worked, would work for my daughter's skill level, and that I liked! 

 

I printed this off education.com, it is a free printable. All you need to do is create a free account at education.com. The passport is found here

The printable has several pages with a variety of animals. I knew not all of the animals in the passport were at our zoo. I did take out quite a few pages and left several blank pages for drawing unique animals not found in the passport. 

On the back cover, I just double-sided taped some small star stickers to use as the marker. 

She found the first animal! 

I loved that the pages also has a small amount of writing. We're still in the stages of getting her use to having a pencil in her hand and the process of writing. Writing each animals name was the perfect amount of writing for a zoo day wither her. She's only four, she doesn't have the patience to write all about each animals habitat, eating habits, etc. 

I love that our zoo will have some of the animals just walking around the zoo (with a zookeeper of course)! It's so cool to be searching for the next animal and find an animal encounter! 

She loved when the animal signs were at her level! She could prop her passport up on the sign and copy the animals name. 

While taking a break, she decided to go through her passport, counted up all the animals we hadn't seen yet and talked about all the animals we'd already marked off! 

The entire month of April at our zoo, is about being in bloom. They plant over 100,000 tulips each year. They also have over one million daffodils, hyacinths, flowering trees, shurbs, etc. It's absolutely gorgeous this time of year. 

 The last thing we always see is the zebras. They are in a hard to find, dead end path and I always forget them. Until we're almost out the doors and Madison reminds me we forgot them.

 I've already got some awesome ideas about how to spruce up and change the zoo passports! I'll be having my first FREE printable!

Earth Day Sensory Bin

Its April 15, which means we have exactly one week until Earth Day! The perfect time to set out an Earth Day themed sensory bin! 

Talk about an awesome, open-ended invitation to play! 

In the bin, I included new Play-Doh (I wish the store would have had brown but, as a last minute shopper I'm stuck with black), two different types of rocks, some seeds, and some fake worms! 

My little one immediately got to work! She started by flattening the play-doh to create the ground. 

Then she counted and lined up the worms. 

It wasn't long before she decided that we needed a pond. 

Thankfully, I had some blue water beads that I had started the night before! Stay tuned for another Earth Day themed water bead sensory bin! 

She then decided that we needed some grass! Our "grass" is green-dyed oats. This is why I always try and save our sensory bin fillers. These oats are leftover from our St. Patrick's Day sensory bin! It's probably going to be a huge pain to pick all the oats out of the Play-Doh but, completely worth it. Using her Learning Resources Hand Tools she was scooping, pinching, and developing those fine motor muscles! 

Diving into sight words

So, we have officially started working on sight words. I'm so nervous for this transition. One of the only things I was worried about when we decided to home school was teaching Madison to read. Just thinking about it still makes me get worked up. The English language is so difficult, I know everyone has seen that poem where it talks about all the ways English is ridiculous. If not, here's a link to one article 21 Reasons why English sucks.

Anyways, back to us beginning our sight word units. First up... play-doh!!!

We use Preschool Prep, which is an awesome resource. I just picked 5 sight words to start with and I put the coloring sheets in page protectors. 

And then she formed each word with Play-Doh! 

After all five words were done we played some games. First up, she was behind each word and as I called each word out she would jump behind the word. 

The next game we played we spread the sheets out some and Madison would jump over each page while saying the word. Kind of like a sight word version of hopscotch! 

I made this awesome clip sight word activity that I found on Pinterest. I wrote each sight word on a popsicle stick And then put each letter on a separate clothespin.  

I laid this activity out and Madison jumped right in with no instruction! 

She was so proud finishing each word! 

Both of these ideas were super simple and a great way for us to start on sight words! I'm still extremely nervous to teach reading but, we're diving right in! 

Day 2 of letter B

First we read The Missing Beach Ball by Sonali Fry and finger painted a paper plate to look like a beach ball.

And here's the finished product hanging on our fridge. 

And then we moved on to an episode of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood on safety at the beach (s1e30). We then did some review from yesterday, she colored some more of her letter B coloring page. We finished up her bumblebee plate craft and buzzed on into the living room to watch an episode of Wild Kratts about bees (options include s1 ep 32, s2 ep 8, and s3 ep2.)

All we did was glue three black strips, a black stinger, two googly eyes, and some black pipe cleaner antenna on the yellow paper plate we painted yesterday. 

Here's the cute little guy all finished up. 

We moved onto reading Bunny Party by Rosemary Wells. We practice hopping like bunnies and went outside and fed/watered our bunnies (and spent some time pretending to be bunnies on her play set. Back inside to make our letter 'B' bunny.

No pictures of Madison putting this one together but, he's such a cute little bunny "B."

Of course, we finished up the day with some preschool worksheets. 

Day 1 of Letter B

First up we read The Little School Bus by Carol Roth (found here) and I'm Your Bus by Marilyn Singer (found here) and put together a cute little school bus with Madison's own drawn friends.

All I did was cut out a yellow rectangle and rounded all the corners. We glued this on to a solid blue piece of construction paper. 

Next, we glued on some wheels! Just two black circles. 

That tongue....

A black strip with a red stop sign gets glued on next.

Drawing people... An adorable idea from her mind. 

She wanted to use a pencil so you can't see her people. 

Our finished product! Love it! 

While I was cleaning up, she started coloring her letter B coloring page.

When we were both done, we sat down and watched an episode of Magic School Bus (s3e1) about bees. We talked about bees throughout the episode. When it was over we cuddled up and read one of our favorites Buzz by Eileen Spinelli (found here) and Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy by David Soman (found here). We then moved on to putting our uppercase letter “B” bumblebee together.

This was a super simple craft I cut up the night before and she just glued the pieces together. She even got the black paint out to finish off the antennas (her idea!!!)

She couldn't even take a break when she got hungry... Multi-tasking at it's finest. 

Since our paint was already out we went ahead and painted a paper plate entirely yellow and put it aside to dry for an activity for tomorrow. 

Next, we moved back into the living room for an episode of Wild Kratts about bees (options include s1 ep 32, s2 e 8, and s3 e2.)

 Next we read The Little Bitty Bakery by Leslie Muir (found here) and went to bake a cake for Madison's ninny's birthday tomorrow)

While it was baking, we practiced writing her name, our number 1 worksheet, and doing some other worksheets. Then it was time to decorate the birthday cake! Yay, this is always so much fun with a 4 year old.

No pictures of the finished product but, my mom loved it and that's all that matters!